Xilizhra wrote...
I have, however, been thinking that the Code feels kind of like an example of moral cowardice, of ensuring that she never has to think for herself in moral situations again. Is there any reason she couldn't have just tried to track down Morinth as herself?
What you are describing is the flaw of all deontological ethics system (in by extension, all legal systems known to mankind): to believe an action is "just" simply because it is legal and follows the letter of the law is fallacy. Is a person "just" BECAUSE she obeys the law (deontological ethics)? Or does a person obey the law BECAUSE she is "just" (virtue ethics)?
We're never given a list of the 5000 sutras, but it's a sure bet most western criminal legislation contains far more than 5000 articles... which implies that 5000 sutras gives Justicars enough of a primer into what asari consider to be their core moral values. Armed with these 5000 sutras, they are expected to get out there and protect the innocent and punish the "unjust".
To me, this implies Justicars are cutting to the chase in their judgements, which are likely limited in scope to immediate consequences. Wether or not Nihlus killed an innocent to protect hundreds more is irrelevant: the Code deals with immediate consequences, long-term views are not considered relevant. Their judgement, while "just", is short-sighted.
This is rather surprising, considering how Matriarchs are respected for their extremely long-term planning and views. One may wonder if the Justicar's "short-sighted" vision of morality isn't a kind of counterpoint to "long-term" view: a dramatic reminder that the long-term view has short-term impacts that are easily brushed aside "for the greater good".
Consider for example Sir Winston Churchill's decision NOT to evacuate certain english cities know to have been targeted for bombardment by the Luftwaffe, in order to protect british intelligence efforts and let the Germans believe their codes were yet unbroken. His staff ordered the deployment of extra fire brigades but the general public was never warned. A difficult decision, one with a price measured in coffins. It is easy to comfort oneself with assessments that such decisions "shortened the war by two years", the danger being that such assessments and outright delusions are often difficult to tell apart. At best, they will allways be "educated opinions", while dead bodies and maimed individuals are quite real: they are FACT, not opinion.
By protecting the innocent, then punishing the guilty according to their near-sighted criteria, Justicars remind the asari society that any decision they make has both long-term AND short term consequences.
Is Samara morally weak for choosing to become a Justicar and "let the Code do her moral thinking"? I think she probably felt she wouldn't have the heart to kill Morinth (her own flesh and blood) without it... Was she a bad person before becoming a Justicar? Probably no worse than Liara, I guess... There was some moral fiber in there; otherwise she wouldn't have ended up fighting and killing her former partners over the fate of a few dozen slaves.
Is her character morally ambiguous? I'd say she is, insofar as true justice shouldn't be blind; it should know what's in the scales before tossing one side and keeping the other. Near-sighted justice may not be the wisest course in the long term; killing a Spectre on a possible war-averting mission for the death of a single individual may doom millions later on... but Justicars dramatically remind the asari that a murder to "save millions" is still murder.
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